A little while ago Chuck Wendig created a writing challenge to do with hiding the body. The challenge was called
The Body (arrestingly enough) and I have tried to write it. As always, any thoughts are much appreciated.
This is well over 1000 words, but it feels like the right length, behold:
The Body
They called him The
Watcher in the gallery because every day he would come and sit in
front of the new reproduction of The Raft of the Medusa. This
started at the opening of the exhibition on a Monday in autumn and
lasted for many a long week, each day the gentleman showing up at the
same time with a carton of juice and a small package of wrapped
sandwiches.
Sometimes art students
would come and sit next to him and regard the painting as he did,
pencils scritching and sliding across heavy, creamy paper as they
sketched a small part of a figure, or roughed out a detail of
swirling sea and soaked, broken timbers.
Every now and then, he
would lean over, look at the book and nod, smiling if he saw a figure
from the scene rendered well, with the subtle vibrancy that Gericault
had captured. For himself, he never drew the painting, just sat and
regarded it, his legs crossed and his demeanour one of repose at a
perfect ease.
In the same way as he
sat and watched, he would stand every day, ten minutes before the
gallery closed and walk over to the painting, looking in what was
obviously plain admiration at the rendering of grey flesh on the
drowned man in the lower left hand corner of the painting, the corpse
depicted draped over the battered timber of the raft. He would then
leave, and in leaving, pass the coffee stand as it closed up,
politely and quietly asking for a fresh latte before he paid and took
the drink out with him into the early evening air.
/////
It had been a long two
months for Livia, her heart still heavy from the brutal uncertainty
of mourning in front of an empty coffin with her family. As she
opened up her satchel and saw her drawing box, she felt tears sting
her eyes, dashing them away with the backs of her hands as she sat,
on a bench in the middle of the gallery.
Her tutors had been
understanding, but she had to compile extensive sketches of this
painting and write up her report before the end of the semester in
order to avoid having to resit or do summer study. With the cost of
the flights home for the funeral, she needed to be able to work all
summer long to pay for the next semester anyway and now that Mario
was gone, she would probably be glad of the company.
There was nothing to do
but to work hard and aim for the best grades she could.
/////
Turning to a new page
in her sketchbook, she pulled out her conte crayons and got to work,
her mind slowly clearing and emptying of all other things as she
sketched and sketched, her mind away and quiescent as she let her
hands find the shapes of the figures.
A guilty part of her
knew that part of this escape was from thoughts of her brother,
missing now for months, the subject of a manhunt that had briefly
captured the imagination of the city before fading into the foetid
wallpaper of urban life, his existence reduced to a few desperate
flyers pinned to lampposts asking for information.
Still, she worked,
sketching out the structures on the canvas, the famed triangular
composition of hope and death and despair, the romantic loucheness of
these naked figures, sprawled in mockeries of sybaritic repose, limbs
tangled artfully and morbidly in the accidental embraces of death and
suffering.
She smiled wanly and
absently as her neighbour leaned over her sketchbook and nodded,
smiling at the drawings pencilled there.
As he stood and made
his way over to the painting, studying the figure lying drowned in
the bottom left, she sighed and leaned back, rubbing her neck and
taking a breather. She would carry on drawing the handsome corpse
when he moved out of the way.
/////
The tape was stretched
across the gallery entrance as she walked up the steps, her brow
creased in confusion as the police milled around in the foyer, their
eyes dark and haunted as a black bodybag was pulled out of the
building on a gurney. Beside her stood the gentleman from the bench
in front of the painting, the carton of juice unopened and sticking
out of a dark blazer pocket.
She paid him little
mind as he sighed quietly and brushed past her, gently strolling
across the grounds and out of sight as she tried to get the attention
of an officer.
“Uh, can you tell me
when the gallery is going to be open again? I don't want to sound
heartless, but my degree is riding on this...”
The man she had asked
demurred and shrugged helplessly, saying something about proper
procedure and prints and evidence. She felt like she had been kicked.
It could not get any worse.
She felt a hand on her
shoulder and looked into the grey eyes of the detective her family
had been talking to those months ago. He looked older now and
unhappy, but still resolutely courteous as ever.
“You'll have to come
with us, Ms. D'Angelo.”
/////
She sat outside the
precint, her face in her hands, and wept in deep ragged sobs, her
sketchbook lying closed in her lap and anointed with the splashes of
fresh tears.
The detective had
explained in great depth but it was like a nightmare: the body had
been found in the attics, lit carefully and arranged in the same
repose as the figure in the painting. The flesh of the body had been
dehydrated and plastinated, preserving it in mannequin like death,
the skin tinted with balms and dyes to mimic the original image.
They had only found
this out when the prism mounted to the back of the reproduction
canvas had come unglued, leaving a dark hole where the drowned man
should have been. Where Mario's corpse had stood in for so long, eyes
closed and patient under the distant scrutiny of his younger sister.
As she blew her nose,
she tucked the used tissue into her jacket pocket and felt a card in
there, the plain rectangle of business card stock.
Pulling it out she
stared at the neat, even type on the card, seeing the marks where it
had been embossed, looking at it, but not understanding it.
“You drew him so
well.”
Her screams brought
policemen racing out of the precinct, their hands on their guns and
panic in their eyes.
When they saw her, they
could only marvel that the grey paleness born from the depth of her
terror made her look like she had simply stepped out of the painting
and into the world; drowned, but still breathing.
